a.A
study by the International Commission on Peace and Food showed that a strategy
designed to improve nutritional levels in India by increasing the productivity
and incomes of farming families could generate downstream multiplier effect
capable of creating 100 million new jobs within a ten year period.

2.Every
society also has a vast reservoir of unutilized and underutilized resources in
terms of knowledge, skill, technology, information, organization, management
expertise, money and values that can be harnessed to meet those needs.

a.For
example, Indian citizens currently hold private savings of more than $200
billion in the form of gold which could be invested in productive activities
that generate employment. The Government has recently introduced a banking
scheme that permits payment of interest by banks on deposit of gold jewelry and
use of the deposit as a part of the bank’s reserve for the purposes of
determining how much money it can lend. This effectively converts the gold into
money.

b.Land
and water productivity are very low in many developing countries. Cotton grown
under irrigated conditions in India on average consumes 30 times as much water
and five times as much land per unit of cotton produced than is required by
leading cotton growers in California using the latest technology for crop
management.

c.There
is no inherent limit to the capacity of society to increase its knowledge,
skill, technology, information, organization, management expertise or values,
therefore there is no inherent limit to its capacity for development and
employment generation.

3.Given
the fact that employment is the primary means provided by society for
individuals to achieve and maintain economic security under current economic
systems, societies are necessarily obligated to ensure that the system provides
opportunities for every citizen to obtain gainful employment. Every nation has
an obligation to guarantee access to gainful employment to all its citizens. Employment
should be made a constitutional right.

a.This
does not mean that government should or could employ every job seeker, any more
than it means the government should itself grow all the food needed to ensure
food security for its population. Rather it means government has an obligation
to formulate and modify its policies to make the system meet this objective.

4.The
number of jobs and the level of employment in any society is a function of the
extent to which the political-social-economic system is able to harness the
available resources to meet human needs. The level of employment generated is
not fixed according to any universal laws of economics. It depends on the
implicit values and explicit policies on which the system is based. Changing
those values and policies changes the availability of employment. There is
ample scope for increasing employment opportunities in every country through a
judicious application of policies.

a.Interest
rates, tax rates, zoning laws, environmental regulations, limits on the number
of licensed physicians or taxicabs, import and export restrictions, limits on
business hours are just a few of the ways in which policies influence the
number of jobs created.

b.A
tax system that provides incentives for capital investment in the form of depreciation
allowances while discouraging employment through the levying of payroll tax is
an example of an explicit policy that creates an inbuilt bias toward investment
in technology rather than labor.

c.The
initiative of Netherlands to ensure part-time employees the same worker rights
as full-time employees enabled large numbers of people who preferred part-time
work to reduce their working hours and thereby created a proportionate number
of new jobs.

5.The
conception that technological advancement inevitably destroys more jobs than it
creates is not supported by the facts. There is no direct relationship between
technological development and unemployment. Therefore, it is not true that
rising levels of unemployment will be an inevitable aspect of the future society.

a.In
spite of the unprecedented adoption of new technologies during this century,
the USA, which is one of the most technologically advanced nations in the
world, has quadrupled the number of people employed since 1900 and has a higher
percentage of its population employed today than at any time in the past 100
years.

b.It
is true that introduction of new technologies can eliminate jobs in specific
fields of activity. It is also true that it can create many more jobs in other
fields related to scientific and industrial research, education, equipment
manufacture and repair.

c.The
higher paid jobs generated by technological development also increase
purchasing power and demand for goods and services generating a multiplier
effect that creates jobs in unrelated sectors of the economy.

6.In
many fields, a shortage of labor is a driving force for technological
advancement rather than vice versa.

a.There
is a shortage of labor for agriculture not only in industrialized nations,
which immigrant labor is essential, but even in the more developed regions of
countries such as India (e.g. Punjab, Pune, Coimbatore).

b.According
to current estimates there are more than 200,000 unfilled jobs for computer
software professionals in the USA today alone.

c.The
tooling and machining industry in USA, which employs highly skilled, high paid
(average $40,000 or more) workers, has been suffering from an increasing
shortage of job applicants for the past decade or more, despite concerted
efforts by the industry to promote careers in this sector.

7.Current
problems of youth unemployment in Europe and many developing countries are a
result of a complex mix of factors which can respond to effective policy
initiatives.

a.The
impact of labor market rigidity on unemployment levels in France and Germany
has been well documented. Recently France has reported progress in loosing up
labor markets.

b.The
population explosion that has peaked in most countries has created a larger
wave of new entrants to the labor force that will gradually decline in the
coming years.

c.The
sudden influx of large numbers of women into the labor force is a one time
increase which has raised unemployment levels in some countries at the same
time that overall employment rates have been rising.

Excerpt from Uncommon Opportunities: Agenda for Peace and
Equitable Development by the International Commission on Peace and Food
(Zed Books, 1994, p.72-75)

“In spite of
widespread anxiety that machines are progressively replacing people in the
workforce, historically there has been a
strong posi­tive correlation between technological development and job creation.
It is certainly the case that the commercial application of each new phase of
productive technologies does displace people from traditional occupations,
reduce the number of workers required to carry out specific tasks, and can in
the short term lead to fewer jobs in specific industries. n the process, a
larger number of low-wage, unskilled jobs are replaced with a smaller number of
higher-wage, more skilled jobs resulting in rising levels of worker
productivity and rising personal incomes. But that is only the most direct
initial impact of improved technology. Seen from a wider perspective and traced
patiently along the course of its myriad consequences, the introduction of new
technology acts as a catalyst that generates a positive ripple effect which, on
average, results in the creation of many more jobs--more skilled, more
productive and higher wage jobs--than it destroys. The rising productivity made
possible by technology reduces production costs and thereby lowers the price of
products and services to customers and consumers. The lower prices result in
increased demand, greater consumption, higher levels of production and even
greater cost reductions due to economies of scale.

“This
represents only the first cycle of job creation. While jobs are being
eliminated in low skilled manual or assembly operations, simultaneously they
are being created in industries that manufacture and service the more
sophisticated machines as well as in R & D laboratories that
develop the new machines, materials and manufacturing processes. The workers
who operate the improved machines require higher levels of skill, which demands
more education and training, thus creating demand for jobs in the service sector.
The more productive and higher paid industrial workers utilize their enhanced
purchasing power to buy more goods and services than before--spending more on
travel, consumer goods, housing, leisure, health and the education of
offspring--thus, creating demand for more jobs in other industries. Rising
incomes generate higher standards and expectations, bringing changes in life
style that create new needs and new commercial activities.

“Advances in
technology provide society with greater conveniences and in the process endow
the society with greater creative and productive abilities. Over time, these
new abilities spur the creation of new activities in many different fields
distantly related to the original point of innovation. The process results in improvements
in health, which raise the level of physical energy; higher standards of
education, which raise the level of mental energy and culture; and higher
levels of social skills and organization, which raise the energy level of the
entire society, making it ever more creative and productive. A comprehensive
study of this wider process of job creation and destruction arising from
technological innovation is needed to develop specific coefficients for
measuring the impact of technological advances in different fields on total
employment. Finally we may hope to dispel the widespread fear and sense of
helplessness that this issue evokes.

“This
process can lead to enormous growth in new jobs. The best documented example of
this process is the automotive industry. Inspired by the idea of making a car
affordable by the working class masses at the turn of the century, Henry Ford
adopted new manufacturing technology, the automated assembly line, to produce
the first low priced automobile. Ford's technology increased worker
productivity more than seven-fold and reduced production costs by two-thirds.
As an immediate result, thousands of small, custom-built manufacturers of cars
and horse-drawn carriages were put out of business. But the growing demand for
low cost vehicles generated explosive growth for the industry, creating tens of
thousands of new jobs in the process. Globally, production rose from less than
250,000 vehicles in 1910 to 42 million in 1980. Nine decades later, the
automotive industry is still the largest manufacturing industry in the world
and the single largest source of jobs in the American economy. Every job
created in automotive manufacturing has spawned roughly ten more in related
occupations. Thus, about 9 percent of the entire US workforce is employed in
occupations directly related to automotive manufacture, sales and services,
road construction and maintenance, and transport of freight and passengers.
Globally 7 to 9 million workers were employed in automotive manufacturing in
1980 and perhaps as many as 50 to 80 million in related occupations. In
addition, the spread of automotive technology has had tremendous impact on the
growth of other industries stimulated by the greater mobility of the
public--retail trade, hotels, restaurants, tourism, recreation--and indirectly
on agriculture, as well as every other service and manufacturing industry that
benefits from lower cost and greater speed of passenger and freight transport.

“The notion
that there are a fixed or inherently limited number of jobs that can be created
by the economy is a fiction. It is not just advances in technology that work in
this fashion. Every major advance in social attitudes, institutions, val­ues
and life style has a duel effect on employment, creating jobs in some areas and
destroying them in others. Higher standards of education not only raise
productivity. They stimulate higher expectations that lead to greater
consumption as well. Changing attitudes toward the environment have created
entirely new industries and generated new jobs in every field where impact on
the environment is of concern. New types of organization such as fast food
restaurants, franchising and hire purchase or leasing create new jobs by
hastening the growth or expanding the activities of the society. Shifting
attitudes toward marriage and the role of women create greater demand for jobs
but also more opportunities for employment, because working women consume more
and require additional services, e.g. the dramatic increase in demand for
day-care services in industrial nations.

“Anxiety
regarding the impact of technological development on jobs has been aggravated
by the belief--largely a hangover from the Industrial Age--that in the
industrial nations automation is rapidly eliminating replacing high wage
manufacturing jobs with low wage jobs in the service sector. Actually, services
have had a dominant place in Western economies for most of the 20th Century. In
America, they now account for 79 percent of all jobs, 74 percent of GDP, and
generate a $56 billion trade surplus, compared to a $132 billion deficit for
goods. Technological development, such as advances in computers,
telecommunications and medical technology, have played at least as great a role
in the growth of the service sector as in manufacturing. New service jobs in
banking, foreign trade, research, design and engineering, computer software,
education, health, law, finance, business management, communications,
transportation, media and entertainment demand higher levels of education and
skills and offer higher pay. In 1992 the median manufacturing job in the US
paid only $19 per week more than the median job in manufacturing. The growth of
technology is freeing workers from the drudgery of the production line, while
providing consumers a quality of life previously available only to the most
wealthy.

“The
organization of production is also a major determinant of the number of jobs
created. The Western pattern of mass production by monolithic corporations that
emerged during the first three quarters of this century is no longer the
inevitable or even the obvious pattern for either industrial or developing
countries in the coming decades. Smaller, technology intensive firms are faster
at adapting new technology, more flexible in meeting specialized customer needs
and generate more skilled, better paying jobs. Recent experience, such as in
the Prato region of Italy, indicates that proper blending of new technolo­gies
in existing productive sectors can be utilized to preserve a geographically
decentralized, small scale pattern of production and enable small firms to
match the competitiveness of countries with much lower labor costs. This offers
an attractive alternative for preserving the small-scale decentralized pattern
of production still prevalent in developing countries and for the future
development of enterprises in new industries.

“Each advance
in attitudes, life styles, social institutions and forms of commercial
organization has ultimately expanded the scope of economic activities and
raised living standards substantially. Jobs are created by our innate
capacities for human resourcefulness and ingenuity which expresses as
invention, innovation and social imitation. The ultimate determinant of the
numbers and quality of jobs in future will not be physical or even financial
constraints, but rather—‘science, technology, values and social
organization--in a word, the human imagination’.”